Constanze Westhoven, D
kühle fluten
D, 1995
U-matic LB, 7:40 min
„It was a hot summer’s day in New York when I was lying in bed with my video camera. I wore a body with a hole in the crotch. I went to the window and caught sight of a man on the street. He stared at a notebook while walking, his head bowed. That’s what we had in common: I was staring into the viewfinder, he was staring into his display.

After an excessive, torturing ad session, I knew which picture got on my nerves the most. It was a baby`s bare arse.“

Images from TV ads, e.g. commercials about nappies, have been abstracted and taken to another context: the fictitious meeting between a man and a woman. In the mass media where the meeting takes place, feelings are simulated with the help of general, replaceable pictures of mass temptation. While the man continues fixing his gaze on the display, and the woman gets lost in the camera’s viewfinder, the tender contact takes place on the retina only.